


Sliding Left Makes Mr. Right

by AnchoredTether



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Airports, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College, Crack, Dorks in Love, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Holidays, Meet-Awkward, Online Dating, Tinder Crack AU, believe it or not Ivy is writing fluff for once
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnchoredTether/pseuds/AnchoredTether
Summary: When Pidge is stuck at an airport waiting for her delayed flight she has nothing better to do than browse through the sea of men online to date. An awkward situation turns into a strangely fond meeting when she swipes left on a man who happens to be sitting behind her observing the rejection.
Relationships: Lance/Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	Sliding Left Makes Mr. Right

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely based on [this tweet](https://i.redd.it/0tyljtjvnx021.jpg).  
> I have no regrets.

"Three hours?! What am I supposed to do for _three hours_?"

Katie grumbled to herself as she wandered around aimlessly with her bright green suitcase. There was no way she was going to simply sit at her gate for three mindless hours as she waited for her heavily delayed flight but the airport offered little more than cheap souvenir shops and places to eat as a form of distraction. There was certainly no way she was going to pass her time by sitting and conversing with some random stranger, either. She frowned at her coffee cup and gave it a shake. It was nearly empty and if she was going to sit around a boring airport for multiple hours, why not have another dose of caffeine, right?

Once she found another coffee shop she acquired a tall mocha with extra chocolate drizzle and settled down at a nearby empty table. She brought her feet up onto her chair, her knees pulled into her chest as she pulled out her phone and idly opened Tinder to kill some time while she waited for her hot beverage to cool. She wasn't particularly invested in the dating app but everyone was doing it and it was mildly entertaining.

Katie's habitual problem was that she spoke her thoughts out loud.

"Oh gross, too much chest hair," she muttered as she swiped left, rejecting the man who was shirtless in all his pictures. "Wow, you look like Josh Keaton." Right. " _You_ are trying too hard." Left. "Hmm, he's kind of cute." Right. "You've probably got four exes who would murder me in the middle of the night." Left. "Aaaand you've never been on a date." Left. "Hmmm you're a _hunk_. Ahaha! And his name is Hunk! Imagine that." Right.

After a few more hopeless candidates she came across a man who caught her attention. She picked up her mocha and started to take a sip as she scrolled through the pictures of the guy named Lance. He was attractive, there was no doubt about that, but he looked like a player in all his shots - classic fingerguns with lowered sunglasses and posing shirtless in front of the bathroom mirror. She was on the fence about swiping right or left when her eyes found his bio and that was the deciding factor:

_You know the definition of a lance? A long weapon for thrusting. And it also means an amazing tango dancer._

"Ouch, hard no for that one?"

Katie was mid-sip when she turned her head over her shoulder to find a man looming in the chair behind her who was none other than the one she just swiped left: _Lance_. She full-on spat out her coffee in a spray but luckily he was out of range of her scalding splash zone.

"Uhhh, uhhhmmm…" She stared at him like a deer in the headlights. "Wow, your eyes really _are THAT_ blue."

"I will gladly take that compliment after the rejection," he said with a proud grin.

"Well, most people photoshop those kinds of things or use filters to make themselves look better than they really are." At least this guy was transparent in that regard - he looked exactly as he appeared in his pictures. Part of her idly wondered if his abdomen reflected what he looked like in his beach pictures and her eyes darted to his stomach as if she would suddenly be able to tell through the fabric of his shirt. She shook her head and adjusted herself in her seat so she could face him better. "Sorry, I didn't mean to - well - _I did,_ but…" She made a frustrated hand gesture as she tried to get the proper words out. "Usually the people you swipe on Tinder aren't _sitting right behind you watching."_

"Fair enough." He frowned thoughtfully. "In my defense, you were saying some pretty entertaining comments so I had to see the pictures that went along with it. Especially the one with four axe murdering exes - he really did look like that." He made a face. "So what made you swipe left? Just curious."

Katie pouted her lips as she debated whether to continue talking to the handsome stranger she rejected digitally but was oddly getting along well with in person, or to give some kind of lame excuse that she needed to get to her flight (which was such a blatant lie) and never have to see him again. The latter option was tempting because she was terribly anxious when it came to any kind of socializing but she wasn't feeling nearly as many butterflies in her stomach when she talked with him. It was an anomaly in her normal conversing behavior so she was curious to see where it went - especially since she rarely went on dates let alone talked to members of the other sex.

"You can tango?"

 _"THAT'S_ why you swiped left!??"

"Oh, no no no, sorry I got - distracted." She kept getting distracted _by him_ and she decided at that moment that she was already four feet in her grave she might as well dig the remaining two. "Come sit over here, will you? It's weird turning over our shoulders like this." She gestured for him to come over and sit at her table, which he did with an excited smile.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Oh, right. I'm Katie."

"To answer your question, Katie," he said as he got comfortable, taking a sip of his coffee and crossing his legs, "Not only can I tango but I'm a ballroom dancing champion."

"Champion? Is that metaphorical or did you actually win some kind of competition?" 

"Four, actually." He counted off on his fingers. "Two for tango, one for salsa and the other for swing."

Katie looked at him like she was sitting with an Olympic gold medalist. "Wow. Is this just a hobby or are you pursuing dance for your career?"

"Ah, no. It's just for fun. I'm actually going to flight school."

It was again her turn to nearly spit out her coffee. _"Flight school?_ As in, one around here? Don't tell me you’re a student at the Garrison."

Lance's eyebrows raised and his lips slowly broke out into a smile. "That I am."

"So am I! Well, except-" She rolled her eyes. "I'm not a pilot, I'm an aerospace engineering major with a minor in computer technology."

His eyes widened. "Oh wow, you're like… a mega nerd." When Katie's brows started to defensively lower he quickly added, "And I mean that as the highest compliment! I'm too dumb to do anything other than flight school at the Garrison." Suddenly his phone on the table started to vibrate. "Oh, hold on, sorry."

Lance answered his phone call and although Katie wasn't particularly eavesdropping she had to wonder who was on the other end. It was important enough that he interrupted their conversation for it, and although she shouldn't have thought it rude since she didn't even _know_ the guy, it still made her feel strange in her chest as she downed more of her coffee. Why should she care? She'd never see Lance again except… they went to the same university. The chances of meeting the crazy coincidence Tinder guy again were actually rather decent. She drank her coffee incredibly fast out of nervousness and could already feel the caffeine start to kick in. It was going to be an interesting three hours.

"I can't wait to see you too! Yeah… hopefully." He looked at her as he listened for a moment. "Probably another two hours or so. Yeah ridiculous, right? By the time my plane shows up I could have been arriving there. Oh well…yeah, I know. Love you too." He hung up and set the phone down, letting out a nostalgic sigh. "Sorry, that was my mom. I've been calling her every half hour or so. It's been almost an hour since I last called so she probably got worried." His eyes softened and he smiled, shaking his head as he laughed.

"Every half hour?"

"I know, pathetic, right?"

"No, that's… actually really sweet." From the way she heard him talking to the other person on the phone she thought it was another woman, possibly a girlfriend or lover, which only made her hopes deflate when she heard him say _'love you too'_ and she fell for the classic assumption that it was another woman in his life and that she was of no importance. Now she felt like an idiot for thinking he was insincerely flirting with her while seeing another woman when they were just strangers _chatting_ and he was talking to his _mother._ She felt like she owed him some kind of apology for thinking that way even though she didn't say anything to betray her misled train of thought. "You really care about your mom, huh? You don't see that often in guys, so it's… it's refreshing."

"Guilty as charged. You really think so?"

Katie nodded. "But also, in regards to what you said before your mom called, well…" She frowned. "If you're a ballroom champion and you got into flight school at the Garrison clearly you're not dumb when it comes to kinesthetic intelligence."

Lance shifted his eyes side to side before looking back at her blankly. "What's that?"

"Bodily intelligence? It means you learn by doing things, you're well-coordinated, you work with your hands… that kind of thing."

"Oh! Yeah that sounds about right." He took a thoughtful sip of his coffee. "That explains why I'm also a sharpshooter."

"See, you could have said you were a _pilot_ and a _sharpshooter_ on your Tinder profile. That would have worked better in your favor."

"It was the dirty joke, wasn't it?" he asked in a deadpan tone. He was planning to ask her again why she swiped left but it seemed she was going to elaborate for him.

 _"That_ , and your pictures really paint you as a different person," she admitted. "I mean, I don't _know_ you but just from our few minutes talking I can tell you're not _… that_ kind of person."

His smile was mischievous as he leaned in. "And _what_ kind of person am I?"

Katie raised her eyebrows. "Usually - and this is a hypothetical assumption - guys who love their mothers enough to call them every half hour of their own volition aren't going to be pulling one night stands. I know most people on Tinder are just in it to find someone to make out with and based solely on your profile I came to the logical conclusion that you were in the majority. _That's_ mainly why I swiped left."

"You make a fine point, Katie." Lance actually had no idea what he was doing and he was just trying to imitate others to fit in. Little did Katie know, Lance had never been in a serious relationship before and girls made him nervous despite his many attempts to flirt with them and his misleadingly calm composure. He was surprisingly good at pulling off the Loverboy facade, but at the end of the day that's all it was - a facade. "I'm curious now to see what _your_ Tinder profile looks like."

She frowned in one corner of her mouth as she took out her phone, opened the app, and pulled up her profile for him to see. "Read it and weep," she said as she handed it to him.

Katie's profile was full of a bunch of cute pictures, but none of them felt staged or edited. She was photogenic and looked happy in all her shots. There was one of her with her dog, her pointing dramatically to a space ship behind her, and a couple of scenic shots of her in a vineyard or climbing a mountain or sitting at a park bench. In some pictures, her hair was longer than the short and wavy mess of hair she currently sported. Lance realized she looked adorable either way.

"Aerospace engineering major by day, hacker by night. Italian, INTP, Aries." Lance read her profile aloud. He frowned pensively as he looked her over a moment longer and then handed her phone back. "I'd say your profile seems pretty accurate."

"Would you have swiped left or right? Before talking with me in person, that is..." She was slightly scared to hear his answer and part of her didn't want to know. She figured someone like him would only be into women who were far more taller and curvaceous than her with long blonde hair and perfect tans. Since he was a professional ballroom dancer that was probably the type of women he hung out with - gorgeous dancers with better taste in everything. But today was a day of being proved wrong with all her assumptions and she had to wonder if she really understood people at all or if she was far too cynical for her own good.

"Oh gosh…" He sounded overwhelmed and her heart sunk with confirmation that he was probably trying to answer in a way that wouldn't hurt her feelings. "Honestly? I would have totally swiped right."

It took her a second to realize he didn't say left. "Wait, what? Why?"

Lance rubbed the back of his neck, his face slowly starting to redden. "I think most guys wouldn't be interested because you're obviously a _nerd_ but… I like it when women are smart. I think there's a lot more to say about a woman's intelligence instead of her appearance. And besides…" His blush started to intensify when his eyes darted away. "You're actually kind of cute."

Under normal circumstances, Katie probably would have snapped at the "actually" thrown in there but she was too stupefied to have done much more than stare at him in shock. When his blue eyes finally looked back at her to find her shocked expression he shrugged nervously.

"What? It's true."

She forced herself to smile (albeit an awkward one) and swallowed back her anxiety. "T-thank you. I actually thought you were… you know… _really good looking_ when I first looked at your profile too. So… so I guess we're even." She let out a nervous laugh and mentally smacked herself for that horrible wording.

"Oh really?" She didn't think Lance could get any redder but somehow he had. "I guess that does make us even!" He laughed as well and Katie had to wonder if that was the dumbest thing she had ever said.

Lance's blush slowly faded when an announcement came on the intercom about a flight and his face hardened. He pointed up towards the ceiling. "That's my flight - I guess they were able to cut the delay short."

Katie pulled her arm in front of her to look at her watch. She still had another hour and thirty minutes before her flight was supposed to leave. It was weird to think that only an hour ago she was contemplating the idea of lying to abandon this stranger and now she was disheartened to see him go. Part of her wanted to keep conversing with him for the remaining time of her delay, which felt completely alien inside her heart considering she dreaded social interaction. For whatever reason Lance had made her feel and act differently than she ever had before and somehow she was alright with that.

When he stood up, she did as well. He fumbled with his phone for a moment and then handed it to her. She saw the screen was pulled up as creating a new contact with the name "Katie" already filled out. "I umm… do we want to pretend that I found you and swiped right and you changed your mind because my profile is terrible and swiped right instead?"

She smiled, quickly punched in her number, and handed it back to him. "I'd like that."

His hand lingered on hers when he grabbed his phone, reluctantly pulling away as if she were some kind of magnet. He was about to turn away and head towards his gate when instead he took a step forward and encased her in a hug, pulling her off the ground so her feet dangled. She let out a small squeak of surprise but returned the hug once he set her down.

"Enjoy your holiday break, Katie. I'll see you at school maybe?"

"Umm yeah! Possibly... well, travel safe," she said lamely. "Thanks for… for sitting with me."

He pulled back and gave her the biggest grin. "Thanks for inviting your Tinder reject to sit with you." He patted her on the shoulder and turned to walk towards his flight.

She watched him leave until she saw the last of his blue suitcase round a corner.


End file.
